Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday March 14, 2013 @11:39AM
from the actually-they-just-like-to-play-with-equipment dept.

It's a long, slow road from tentative discovery, to various forms of peer review, to wide acceptance, never mind theory and experimental design, but recent years' work to pin down the Higgs Boson seem to be bearing fruit in the form of cautious announcements. FBeans writes with excerpts from both the New York Times ("Physicists announced Thursday they believe they have discovered the subatomic particle predicted nearly a half-century ago, which will go a long way toward explaining what gives electrons and all matter in the universe size and shape.") and from The Independent ("Cern says that confirming what type of boson the particle is could take years and that the scientists would need to return to the Large Hadron Collider — the world's largest 'atom smasher' — to carry out further tests. This will measure at what rate the particle decays and compare it with the results of predictions, as theorised by Edinburgh professor Peter Higgs 50 years ago.")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boatswain [wikipedia.org]
A boatswain (pron.:/bosn/, formerly and dialectally also/botswen/), bo's'n, bos'n, or bosun is an unlicensed member of the deck department of a merchant ship.
I believe they exist!

I'd prefer to hear about a truce between ardent atheists and fundamentalists where the former stops trying to disprove the existence of a divine creator and the latter stops trying to ban the teaching of evolution.

I have never heard of an ardent atheist who puts any effort whatsoever into disproving the existence of a divine creator. The notion is nonsense in itself, as there is noting to prove or disprove and no way to go about doing either.

I don't know. Even what appears to be logically self-contradictory may not cover the entity that is supposed to have created causality itself. That's why it is generally pointless to get torqued up about science and religion. The two don't tend to meet in any way that will generate a conclusive result, and if God exists, he appears to like it that way.

There is more to beliefs than what makes rational sense. In the same way that an average tennis player will perform better (plenty of studies) if he truly "believes" he can beat Federer, a society performs better if it believes in certain things rather than others. Beliefs are about what works best, not what is true (may coincide, may not). We have evolved to survive, not to discover truth. This is why I consider aggressive atheists to be rather naive and annoying even if they are not strictly speaking wro

Yes, but what's the point of that? They're already believing in something that doesn't make any sort of rational sense, presenting them with further evidence isn't likely to do anything than cause your blood pressure to spike.

But believing in the Big Bang is logical? 13+ billion years ago everything sprang forth from a singularity of infinite density (lots of rational sense to be found there). Where did it come from? What caused it to explode? If it was infinite, where's the rest of it? Because we live in what appears to be an expanding universe, we take a leap of faith and assume that it all spring forth from a single point. I'm fine with this as we really don't have a better explanation, and it seems to be a workable theory to for now. But it takes some faith to believe it, even if many people don't like to admit it.

Personally, I believe in god. I know, that's a sure way to get modded as a troll on/. However I don't know if he/she exits for sure. I can accept that god may have been an alien, was even created by the mass consciousnesses from the belief of enough people, or even some sort of reality dysfunction that is left over from the big bang itself. Regardless, most religions tend to worship a god that tells us to be good to each other, so I don't really find this to be a bad thing. Generally it's power crazed nutjobs that pervert religions to commit acts of violence, which is a shame.

I really don't see how it's so hard to find a way to reconcile ones religious beliefs with their scientific ones. Anyhow, my point is, is that there is nothing wrong with what anyone believes, so long as they aren't hurting anyone else. If you want to believe that the universe just popped into existence for no apparent reason, I'm not here to argue with you. But I would also appreciate the same respect for my impossible to prove beliefs too.

Firstly, a lot of people do use their belief in God to harm others, from opposing gay marriage to the twin tower attack, belief has caused a lot of harm.

Secondly, 'belief' in the Big Bang is different from belief in God, in that if a scientist discovered something which would make the Big Bang an unlikely explanation we'd all say 'oh, ok' and start believing the new hypothesis. There are still people trying to argue that the Earth is only 6,000 years old...

Interesting side note, my iPhone capitalized Big Bang for me, but not God...

Firstly, a lot of people do use their belief in God to harm others, from opposing gay marriage to the twin tower attack, belief has caused a lot of harm.

And a lot of people use their scientific knowledge to build weapons. Lots of weapons. And those weapons give people the ability to do many orders of magnitude more harm than they ever could have with out them.

Secondly, 'belief' in the Big Bang is different from belief in God, in that if a scientist discovered something which would make the Big Bang an unlikely explanation we'd all say 'oh, ok' and start believing the new hypothesis.

Not really. It would take decades to change our minds on the matter. The scientific community does not "turn on a dime". And rightly so. The theory of the Big Bang is like seeing the ripples in a still lake hours later and arguing if a fish or a duck made the initial splash. Both are possible, but it c

Anyone who believes in the Big Bang is an idiot. I know that the Big Bang is the most likely explanation for what we see from what we know. That is all. No belief required. No sacred cows need to be slaughtered when new information and theories come to light.

Regardless, most religions tend to worship a god that tells us to be good to each other,

Can I join you on whatever planet you're posting from? Seems a lot better than mine in this respect. On THIS planet we have bad tempered narcissistic sky gods with a serious inferiority complex who are either diddling with family members or structuring wholesale genocide.

Everything in the universe is expanding from a single point and at a rate which would put everything in the same spot about 13 billion years ago.

Seems logical enough to me that something exploded at that location 13ish billion years ago. Just because you choose to believe in such nonsense without any evidence to support the hypothesis does not put it on any sort of equal footing with observable reality. It just means that you were raised to believe in things without any good reason to believe in it.

>> You know we're going to see this headline:"Scientists prove that God exists." Scary.If there is proof, there is proof right?I dont care whether it is definitive proof that a god or multiple gods exist, or it is definitive proof that a god or multiple dont exist. As long as it is proper proof, and not the 'proof' that is used these days in religious matters.Maybe commercial flights to heaven as a holiday destination are possible. Ask God why he forbade us to "have no other gods before me" and where

None of these articles make any links to "God" other than a few -- mostly UK, not US -- sources referring to it as the so-called "God particle", but even those explain exactly what this particle is theorized to be, not anything supernatural, "proving God exists", or having anything whatever to do with God.

GENEVA -- The search is all but over for a subatomic particle that is a crucial building block of the universe.

Physicists announced Thursday they believe they have discovered the subatomic particle predicted nearly a half-century ago, which will go a long way toward explaining what gives electrons and all matter in the universe size and shape.

Considering the media operates with not only with an expectation for godlessness but an appreciation thereof, I suspect such an admittance might actually be conceptually difficult for them. We'd never see it even in fact a universal supreme being (God) were discovered to exist.

The Higgs field is what give particles mass (in part anyway), the Higgs Boson is an excitation in this field, so the actual discovery is the Higgs field via finding the associated particle. If we are able to manipulate the Higgs field (which is currently all in the realms of SF speculation) then yes, we might be able to change the mass of particles in one way or another, but I don't expect to see inertial dampeners or anything similar in the next few decades. I'd be quite happy to be proven wrong, but it'

We can lower the mass of a spaceship already by using lighter construction materials and jettisoning any bits we don't need --- however, that helps nothing to boost the speed past c. Within the framework of our present best scientific understanding (the "Standard Model" that predicted the Higgs Boson), you still can't go faster than light no matter what chicanery you attempt. Perhaps some future discovery (requiring a serious re-write of physics fundamentals) will change this, or perhaps not (the more likel

If you've going to posit a "system aboard the ship that increases the energy density of the higgs field in your local vicinity," you might as well posit that you have a magic box that locally increases the value of c. Within our current scientific understanding, the properties of fundamental fields, like the value of c and the gravitational/inertial mass equivalence, are simply facts of the universe that can't be manipulated with some snazzy device. By starting your though experiment with a device that alre

uhm, reading comprehension is hard for you? I am pretty sure I said you couldn't violate c this way, at the very beginning. Only that you could go very fast without normal reaction mass as the source of forward momentum.

As for the mechanism, I was leaning more toward artificially increasing the higgs particle density, rather than increasing particle interaction affinities. Much light bombarding the living fuck out of a uranium atom with neutrinos and electrons will cause it to decay faster, due to increas

Sorry, I was reading a bit too quickly, and assuming you were continuing the discussion of the grandparent poster asking "couldn't you lower the mass of a spaceship and accelerate it past light speed?".

Anyway, you're still trying to pull some not-in-known-physics sleight of hand with your higgs-o-matic mass fiddling device. If I'm reading you right, you're saying that particles still have the same rest mass contribution from the existing (unchanged) Higgs field, plus extra interactions with the extra Higgs

That is correct. The higgs manipulation device would be a monsterous energy hog, and would release a shitton of useless energy as the excited higgs particles decay.

That is not where the ship gets the energy to move forward.

All gravitational attractions are mutual. When you jump off the ground, the earth is ever so slightly attracted to you and moves up, as you fall back down. (This is balanced by the energy you supplied when you kicked off the ground, for a net of 0.)

What you seem to be missing is why your plan *doesn't* work if you actually used molasses instead of Higgs --- and that the Higgs aren't particularly different in this respect. So, your ship is embedded in a blob of Higgs molasses. If the free Higgs were somehow pinned stationary to the fabric of spacetime, then it would indeed slow down the ship being pulled by the star's gravity. However, just as with embedding the ship in a molasses ball, the ship and free Higgs cloud are falling *together* under the sam

The degree to which a reference frame drags in comparison to another reference frame is dependent upon the mass energies of both frames. This mechanism directly futzes with that rest mass energy. It should therefor alter the behavior of the two frames involved.

No - you'd need to decrease the mass of the spaceship to zero to do that, relativity and the speed of light limit applies to any object with mass, no matter how small. What you might be able to do is reduce the mass to get closer to the speed of light, but you still can't break it.

Yes, but in a different way. Nothing with positive mass can travel at-or-faster-than c. Things without mass (photons, basically) must travel at exactly c. There's also wriggle room for things with negative mass, tachyons, which must travel faster than c.

You are not going to be able to accelerate any mass, no matter how small, to the speed of light in a vacuum, full stop. The amount of energy needed to accelerate any mass whatsoever to light speed becomes infinite as you approach it.

What you *may* be able to do is functionally overcome the speed of light by altering spacetime or cu

OK, I'll be slightly clearer: Assuming that the equations of relativity are an accurate reflection of how our universe works, nothing with positive mass can travel at c or faster. That's a pretty unambiguous version.

No, because most of the mass doesn't come from the Higgs field.Specifically, most of the mass of ordinary matter comes from the nuclei of atoms. Those are composed of protons and neutrons, which are in turn composed of a mix of quarks, anti-quarks, and gluons, with 3 "extra" quarks. The Higgs field gives mass to the quarks and anti-quarks (including the extras) but most of the mass of the particle is due to the binding energy of the strong force interaction between the constituent parts. So reducing the str

The Higgs (named after Peter Higgs, not Higg, as your use of the possessive apostrophe would suggest) boson gives fermions and several bosons (including itself) their intrinsic mass. Even when discussing relativity, "mass" usually refers to the intrinsic Newtonian-style mass that you mean when you say "rest mass." "Relativistic mass" means the total energy of a system divided by c^2, which includes the intrinsic mass.

I also doubt the OP is referring to relativistic mass because he's talking about reducing

Peter Higgs did the math to show how the particle would behave and what it would ‘act like.’ But that was all on paper; in the meantime, the little bugger has eluded empirical discovery. It was so elusive, that a physicist (Leon Lederman) originally coined it the “Goddamn particle,” in a proposed title to his book on the subject. His publisher persuaded him to re-name it “The God Particle,” and the name has taken off in the public sphere (much to the chagrin of many physicists).

God Damned Editors!

So you're saying its a good thing that Slashdot's editors never do a damn thing?

I would suggest that google is a better place to find out this stuff. here you are just going to get a list of gramatical errors and some arguments about Religion, and probably some OS wars...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21785205 [bbc.co.uk]
The BBCis a good place to start, if you would like your questions answered:D

The theory behind the Higgs mechanism motivated the search for the Higgs particle in the first place. It's well worked out. Check Wikipedia.

How is a Higgs Boson produced?

Practical answer: if you put enough energy in a small enough space you'll get all kinds of particles. Some of those will be Higgs'.Sciency answer: the Higgs particle is just a manifestation of a perturbation in the Higgs field, just like every other fundamental particle is a perturbation in it's own quantum field in modern quantum field theory. To produce a Higgs you pump enough energy into the Higgs field in a particular location.

Can we produce these particles at will?

If at will you mean by smashing other particles together at high speed and occasionally getting a Higgs out, yes. If you mean specifically producing a Higgs on command, no.

Nobody knows for sure, but people suspect that Higgs field (a complicated directionless/scalar field) interacts with other particles which creates the effect of expected non-zero rest mass. Other fields can yield non-rest mass effect so it's only the rest-mass that was problematic.

How is a Higgs Boson produced?

You don't really make them, they are more like a momentary "quiver" in the higgs field which immedietly decays into something else. Right now we are making this momentary quiver by colliding protons.

Flying cars, invisibility, peace in the Middle East, FTL travel, consensus on the original lyrics to "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"?

At first I thought you couldn't be serious, then I dove into the information river for a swim. [wikipedia.org]. Amazing, things you learn and beliefs shattered. "In the Garden of Eden"? Really? So I took it one step further and wanted to see a video to help remember the song. I found this one [youtube.com] and had a disconnected moment thinking "My God those guys were old even back then". I quickly understood it was just a bunch of old guys reliving their glory. Please, old rockers, don't go on tour any more, you don't live up t

I did not really see that number stated in the various articles. I read that the US Tevatron saw a 'hint" of Higgs with three possible events.
The other thing I read in Physics Today is there are six classes and over thirty ways the Higgs can decay. Some ways are easier to see with current detectors than others. The July 4 announccment was based on at least two decay modes. The more modes the more confidence.

Bitching about spelling and grammar like Bosun and Higg's with the apostrophe.

This post is still far better written then anything from the Huffington Post, a company of barely literate Gen Y'rs trying to write the "news" on their iPhones in between Tweets and popping Ritalin and Red Bull.

It's correct that CERN is European. It's also correct that a significant portion of its budget comes from the US. It's further true that basically all the teams working the various experiments at the LHC are multi-national, consisting of European, Asian, and North American researchers (at least, there may be African and/or Australians as well). So it's kind of pointless and dumb for any particular nationality to beat their chest and proclaim that the Higgs boson is their discovery. This was a world-wide eff

The fundamental difference between belief in science and belief in religion:

Lets say somehow the world's scientific knowledge was lost; completely wiped off the face of the world. After the inevitable chaos, death, and destruction from the lack of food, water, medical care, power generation, etc, etc, the world would get going on science again eventually. And after a few thousand years, the body of knowledge would be fundamentally the same as what it is now. There will, doubtless, be areas that are well

Every predomently atheist society has the same rules, even those rare cultures that have no concept of religion. You're trying to argue that religion and morality are the same thing, which they need not be. It's true to a certain extent, most religions codify those morals, but then again, so do most governments.

Consensus is very much part of the scientific method as it is actually practiced, even if not in an over-simplified theory of it. In practice, the people forming the consensus are smart, rational folks who rely on the "mathematical property of repeated observations" as much as possible. However, even with a few experiments reporting the same number --- how well do folks trust that there were not common systematic errors impacting all of them (it has certainly happened before)? That the results are not misinterpreted due to mistakes in the calculations, or missed effects? Forming a consensus within the scientific community that the reported numbers are *trustworthy* is a critical part of the actual existing scientific process: it's called peer review, and catches a lot of honest mistakes that a "just trust the numbers; don't bring your human experience/intuition/skepticism into it" approach would not.

Yes, I wasn't arguing against that. Consensus forms a critical filter that separates "sound conclusions" from iffier (but just as good "on paper" based on reported error bars) propositions that require further scrutinizing efforts.

The energy of the tevatron collider at Fermilab is much lower than at CERN, making it very difficult if not impossible to observe the Higgs or measure its properties there. The collider has been shut down for more than a year anyhow as they transition to other physics experiments. http://www.fnal.gov/pub/tevatron/ [fnal.gov]

I really don't understand people who get excited over that nickname. Leon Lederman nicknamed the Higgs boson the goddamn particle for his book, and his publisher made him change it. People who aren't zealots know the particle has nothing to do with god and don't care. People who are zealots... will likely remain zealots. The only ones affected are weird edge cases like you who get excited about what you think other people might get excite

Only morons or illiterates believe that this represents "discovering God", and being religious doesn't make you either.

Hell, the new Pope has an M.S. in Chemistry, so that's at least major one religion that isn't going to do something that retarded.

And the "God" particle is being used by the Media, not scientists. They had to shorten, "the Goddamn particle" to something that could be printed, and they realized that calling it the God particle would make a great headline. If you want to blame someone for i

"generally accepted scientific fact" = consensus --- otherwise, what's the "generally accepted" part? There is no stronger scientific definition of "fact" that transcends a general consensus based on a multitude of apparently properly done confirming experiments.

Its not perfect replication, but the LHC has 2 multipurpose exeriments ATLAS and CMS. They a 2 separate teams of people, using different detectors of different designs, different software and different analysis techniques. The do share some systems, ie the same proton beam (so a miss calculation in the beam energy will effect them both (not that it matters a huge amount for proton collisions)), they sometimes work in the same buildings, and they go to the same canteens.

The Higgs field is part of the a particular formulation of quantum field theory that is often called the Standard Model. There are lots of other quantum field theories, and other theories that are not field theories, not quantum theories, or both, that may or may not have any relation to reality.

The existence of a Higgs particle in a particular energy range, detectable by such and such means, is a hypothesis, motivated by theory called the Standard Model, other more speculative theories which may one day b

theories can be useful. the standard model is useful for predicting the outcome of experiments. these Higgs boson results are a part of that. there are actually several theories about the Higg boson's properties (such as spin and decay rate & products), and more research will tell which of those models are useful. science is about useful models, you want Truth go next door to Philosophy department.

All these government scientists know they can keep getting grant money toeing the standard modelist line.

And besides, even if the Higgs Field does exist, it doesn't prove the theory is correct, so why should we be spending millions of dollars to change textbooks when there is nothing we can do with this knowledge anyway.

When the electron was discovered, it could have also, and naively been considered useless. However here we are commenting on the latest discovery of science, utilising that very knowledge. The point is, you don't know what will be usefull and what won't be useful. Besides it's fun, interesting and nearly always useful to learn how the universe works.
The internet was made at CERN, you could say as a result of this research. So.....

the new sub-atomic particle announced last summer bears one of the classic signatures of the proposed Higgs boson – it does not spin or rotate like all other known sub-atomic particles.

The fact that this new particle is “spin zero”, combined with further evidence based on the way it decays into other known sub-atomic particles, is a convincing indication that it is indeed the Higgs boson,

well, there are "fermions", after Fermi, and "bosons", after Bose, but those are the two classes of particles. There are "gluons", ending in -on, but from English "glue". Then there are the W and Z bosons, which are just letters, and the quarks...